In Gentrifying Atlanta, Black-Owned Food Businesses Are Banding Together to Survive—and Thrive

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Keitra Bates lost her restaurant due to a rent hike. Now she’s fighting to protect other Black entrepreneurs from the same fate.

, an Atlanta-based social enterprise focused on community-led real estate development, concurs: “The people making products out of their homes or cars are also the people who might not otherwise have the means to do it in the most institutionalized, professionalized way, so they’re the first to get displaced from an income and wealth standpoint,” she says. “A place like Marddy’s changes that.”

“I call it bro-based gentrification. Nothing is meant for the people there already. It’s meant for the people who areThe property has since been sold to a different firm, Ackerman & Co., but the demographics remain much the same. Asked the same question, Bates said: “There was nothing but Black businesses and warehouses here. For years, this place was where you’d go and get socks and white tees, and then one day all of a sudden you see ‘going out of business, everything must go.’ There was an importer of shea butter and black soap, things that Black people like. Gone.”

When she was first starting out, Georgette Reynolds sold her fresh-pressed juices, wellness shots, and cleanse packages at the local gym; now, thanks to help from Marddy's, she's able to ship them all across the country.The building’s remodeled interior is bright and cozy: cream walls, potted palms, blonde wood shelving lined with old photos. Williams’s original lunch counter remains at the center of it all, and a painting gifted by her goddaughterhangs on the wall.

 

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